


Hunters

by bzarcher



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game), Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Body Horror, Dark Magic, F/F, Hunters & Hunting, If Blizzard won't give us a spider queen skin by GOD I will, Implied Deaths, Widowtracer, bloodborne au, implied brainwashing, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 06:50:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16279721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bzarcher/pseuds/bzarcher
Summary: A Hunter swears to seek out the beasts in the dark. To turn back the madness that threatens good men and women. To destroy those who lose themselves. But above all, there is one rule:A Hunter Must Hunt.





	Hunters

**Author's Note:**

> This was very much inspired by [Nine](http://senshi-9.tumblr.com/post/178983634079/senshi-9-bloodborne-au-revisited)'s beautiful Bloodborne AU artwork, and uses several concepts from her art with her permission!

_“You shouldn’t have come here.”_

The Hunter laughed as she straightened up from where she’d been hiding. “I’ve heard that before.”

The massive network of spiderwebs seemed to vibrate as if it was absorbing her words from the air, then thrummed with power as the low whispering voice seemed to echo from every corner of the immense cavern.

_"Many hunters have come before you. None survived to tell of this place.”_

The Hunter carefully kept her hands away from the grips of her twin daggers. “You know as well as I do - a Hunter must Hunt.”

It had been the first thing she’d been taught all those years ago by the Countess who had accepted her as an apprentice, wielding her rifle spear with such beauty and grace even as she mourned her lost husband.

 _“So they must,”_ the voice agreed. _“To seek out the beasts in the dark. To turn back the madness that threatens good men and women. To destroy those who lose themselves…”_

The Hunter smiled as she knelt at the edge of the web. “So which one of those is you, then?”

The voice went silent for a long moment. _“Do you mock me, Hunter?”_

“Not at all,” the Hunter answered her. “I’m always curious. Don’t sound like a beast to me. Don’t sound mad, either.”

_“Then perhaps I lost myself…”_

The Hunter shook her head as she stood up. “Don’t think so. Mind if I tell you a story?”

_“Amuse yourself however you like before your end comes.”_

“Oh, come on!” The Hunter’s smile turned to a disappointed frown. “I thought we were getting somewhere. Havin’ a nice conversation!”

The cavern was silent for a long moment before the voice returned.

_“Tell your story. I will listen.”_

The Hunter’s smile returned as she paced the length of the web. “A long time ago, there was a Huntress who nearly everyone admired - ‘cept for the ones who feared her. Brave woman. Beautiful, too. She fought for the thrill of the hunt, but she never refused to help someone who came to her for aid. Even trained a few Hunters who came to learn from her.”

The voice remained quiet, but there was a sense that it was listening with rapt attention.

“One of those she’d trained cared deeply for her. Maybe more than she should have. Plenty of people don’t approve of that sort of thing, and the Huntress…” She stopped, her voice suddenly dry, and had to take a drink from the waterskin she kept at her belt. “She was an honorable sort. Would never have taken advantage of her student’s feelings, even if she returned them.”

_“Your story is a tragedy, then?”_

“Might be,” the Hunter admitted. “But might not, either. See, that woman the Huntress trained, she got...lost. Found herself in a place she couldn’t escape. Not without a lot of help.” The Hunter opened the buttons of her coat, despite the cool damp of the cavern, exposing the faintly glowing chains wrapped around her chest. “In the meantime, the Huntress kept on. Drove herself into her work, as I understand it. Finally angered someone - some _things_ \- that even she couldn’t face alone. Got taken into the darkness. Some say the Huntress was changed by them. Bound to them. Twisted into something barely recognizable.”

 _“It_ **_was_ ** _a tragedy,”_ the voice concluded. _“I know this story, Hunter. I know how it ends.”_

“Do you?” The Hunter’s eyes gleamed in the darkness. “Then you know that the Huntress didn’t fall willingly. You know that one night she finally escaped from them, or so I’m told.”

_“I know she killed many who once called her a friend.”_

The Hunter’s tears tracked down her cheeks. “Amélie…”

 _“That woman died, Hunter.”_ The web’s vibrations increased as something stirred in the depths, moving between the shadows. _“That name holds no meaning here.”_

“It means something to me,” the Hunter insisted as she took a step out onto the web. “It always did, and still does.”

The web trembled with her every footstep, but there was something more. A thrumming, as if skilled fingers were plucking the strands of the web like the strings of a harp.

The Hunter couldn’t plant her feet to steady herself as the vibrations increased, but with a little hop to a thicker part of the web she managed to stay upright.

 _“Foolish girl!”_ The voice rose to an echoing cry. _“She is gone. Only this shell remains…”_

The shadows parted, and the voice’s owner emerged.

_“Only the Queen of the Spiders!”_

Even though she’d done her best to steel herself for this moment, the Hunter gasped with shock as the Queen came into the light, clutching her rifle spear in one hand.

From a distance, she seemed to still possess a familiar shape, but as she grew closer the Hunter could see how dark magics had twisted the body of the woman she once knew.

Spindly, double jointed legs covered in black and brown chitin extended out from a bulbous purple abdomen that trailed behind her like a mockery of the fine coat she had worn on her hunts.

Her arms were bare, the once pale skin turned a sickly blue-grey, while her torso was wrapped in what the Hunter had taken for the remains of one of the elegant shirts the Huntress had once favored, until good lighting revealed it to be layers and layers of the silk from her monstrous spinnerets that had been wrapped about her body until it bound her breasts and belly, the loose strands falling about her hips.

Worst of all, though, was what the foul cult’s sorcery had done to her face.

Aside from her transformed skin, she looked no different at first, a vision of beauty that had captivated the Hunter almost from the moment they had met. But as she grew closer…

The Hunter shivered as shining golden eyes stared her down, and what she had taken for fine scars along the Spider Queen’s forehead opened to reveal six inhuman eyes, each burning from within with crimson light. The beautiful black hair that been kept just so in a ponytail now dull and lank as it spilled down her back, cobwebs tangled through her locks.

There were two more scars that extended from each corner of her mouth to her cheekbones, and when the Queen opened her mouth to hiss with fury at her they split wide to reveal wickedly sharp mandibles, their tips dripping with venom.

 _“Do you understand now, Hunter?”_ The Queen crawled closer across the web, the mandibles folding back into her jaw. _“You will not find the woman you seek.”_

The Hunter’s hands had strayed to her daggers out of instinct, and she forced them away, more of the luminous chain dangling from her wrists.

“You have her voice,” the Hunter said as she carefully navigated the web. “You wear her face. You know her name.” Tears still streaked her freckled cheeks, but she did not flinch from the Queen’s gaze. “I was gone. So, so far gone. In a place where there was no light, no dark. No day, no night. Just endless, endless grey. A world of shadows, and mirrors.”

The spider’s hand tightened on the haft of her spear but she did not move to strike, the clawed feet at the end of each leg gripping strands of her web as she listened.

“The skills my Huntress taught me kept me alive,” the Hunter said in a voice barely above a whisper, every word charged with her turbulent emotions. “The hope of meeting her again one day kept me going. The memories of her kept me strong. Kept me sane.” Her lips quirked in a crooked smile. “Well. Sane as any Hunter ever is.”

The Queen had gone still but for the subtlest tremble of her lips. _“You would survive such a place only to come here, Hunter?”_

The Hunter’s smile was gone, and her voice held nothing but conviction. “For you, I would have walked into Hell itself.”

Before the Queen could react, the Hunter gathered her courage and took one final step, closing the distance so she could lift herself onto the toes of her boots and press her lips to the Queen of Spiders’ mouth.

The Queen’s lips were chapped, cool, and rough, no surprise after so many years spent hiding away from the world. She inhaled sharply with surprise, and the Hunter braced herself for the sting of fangs and the burn of venom, but none came.

 _“Even now?”_ The Queen whispered as the Hunter broke the kiss. _“You could love a creature like me? Even when I have become...this?”_

“With all my heart,” the Hunter promised as she reached up to caress the Queen’s cheek. “Always.”

 _“A promise that has been made to me before,”_ the Queen said mournfully.

“You believed it then,” the Hunter pointed out. “And from all you’ve told me, he was good and true to you.”

The Queen bowed her head, mutely acknowledging that truth.

“Then please, Amélie,” the Hunter urged. “Believe me now.”

 _“Lena,”_ the Queen sobbed, and let her spear fall into her webs as she lunged forward to take the Hunter into her arms in a desperate embrace.

“I’m here now, luv,” Lena murmured into Amélie’s tangled hair, punctuating her words with soft, gentle kisses. “I’m here.”

 _“I have done terrible things,”_ she whispered, full of regret.

“As have I,” Lena answered. “Would you forgive me them?”

 _“I would,”_ Amélie nodded, all eight of her eyes closing once again.

Lena pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. “Then I forgive you, too.”

They had much to speak of. Much to learn of each other, again, and much to explain. But one thing was certain: When they were ready, they would leave this place, together, and set out into the night.

After all, Hunters must hunt.


End file.
